The Shortage Is Not of Men, but of Sacrifice

Fr. Longenecker's recent post on X has the appeal of simple arithmetic to solving the shortage of priests in the Church today: too few priests, plenty of married deacons, so why not ordain the deacons and the problem is solved. Only an obstinate hierarchy clinging to celibacy "at all costs" stands in the way. While it’s a clever argument, it treats the shortage as a staffing problem, as if the Church were a franchise short on managers. The Catholic priesthood isn’t a job needing to be filled, but is a sharing in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and the discipline that surrounds it grows from what the priesthood is, not from whatever is the administrative preference.

I write with respect for Fr. Longenecker, who came into the Church from Anglicanism and was ordained as a married man under a special provision by Benedict XVI. The Church made that exception generously for converts, and his priesthood is valid and real. But an exception made out of charity for a particular situation cannot become the model for the Latin Church without changing the thing it was an exception to.

The priest is an image of Christ the Bridegroom

The priest stands at the altar in persona Christi. When he says "This is my Body," he does not speak about Christ; he speaks as Christ. Our Lord was a virgin, and He remained one, because His whole life was given to His Bride, the Church. The celibate priest is not simply following a rule. He is conformed in his body and his affections to the One whose sacrifice he offers. His undivided heart, as St. Paul says, belongs to "the things of the Lord" (1 Cor 7:32–33).

This is why Pius XI in Ad Catholici Sacerdotii¹ and Paul VI in Sacerdotalis Caelibatus² did not defend celibacy mainly as a matter of practicality. They defended it as a fitting sign: the priest espoused to the Church, spiritually fruitful, freed for a fatherhood that reaches every soul entrusted to him. To treat it as an obstacle to be removed when numbers are low is to misunderstand what it signifies.

The ancient discipline was continence, not merely celibacy

Critics routinely point out that the early Church ordained married men, beginning with St. Peter himself. That is true, and cannot be denied. But the question is what happened after ordination. Scholars such as Christian Cochini, Cardinal Alfons Stickler, and Stefan Heid have shown that the early Church expected married clerics to live in perfect continence with their wives once ordained.

The evidence is actually quite striking. The Council of Elvira³ in Spain, around the year 305, forbade bishops, priests, and deacons to have relations with their wives. Pope Siricius,⁴ writing in 385, treated clerical continence as a settled obligation, not an innovation. The Council of Carthage⁵ in 390 required continence of bishops, priests, and deacons, saying that this preserved what the apostles taught and antiquity itself observed. These were not councils inventing a new burden. They were defending an inheritance.

So when St. Peter says, "Behold, we have left all things and followed thee" (Mt 19:27), and Our Lord promises reward to those who leave "house, or parents, or brethren, or wife" for the kingdom (Lk 18:29), the tradition has understood this as a real renunciation. Peter may well have remained married in name, and his wife may have accompanied him, but the ancient witness suggests that they lived as brother and sister so that he could give himself wholly to the mission Christ gave him. The married apostles are not an argument against clerical continence. They are its first example.

The Eastern churches, since the Council in Trullo in 692, permitted married priests to use marriage except before celebrating the liturgy. The Church has never condemned that discipline, and Eastern Catholic priests are true priests. But the Latin Church has always understood its own practice as the more faithful preservation of the apostolic norm. Fr. Longenecker's proposal would not return us to the early Church. It would take us further from it.

The deacon at the altar

This brings me to a question many traditional Catholics feel but rarely say aloud: the restored permanent diaconate itself. The deacon is not a layman with extra duties. He receives Holy Orders, enters the clerical state, and serves at the altar of sacrifice. The ancient canons bound deacons to continence alongside priests and bishops, precisely because they belong to the same sacred order.

The permanent diaconate restored after the Second Vatican Council⁶ introduced something the early Church does not appear to have known: a married cleric serving at the altar with no expectation of continence at all. Even the current Code of Canon Law, in canon 277,⁷ obliges clerics to "perfect and perpetual continence," and serious canonists have argued that the plain text reaches married deacons too. Rome has not applied it that way, but the tension within the law itself tells us something. The Church's own legislation still carries the memory of the older discipline, even as practice has moved away from it.

None of this is an accusation against any particular deacon, most of whom serve generously and in good faith. It is a concern about the principle. If the altar calls for an undivided heart, then the unease many of us feel is not prudishness. It is the instinct of the tradition.

The real shortage

Fr. Longenecker assumes celibacy is the cause of the vocations crisis, but the evidence says otherwise. Protestant denominations with married clergy, and even married women clergy, face their own shortages. Meanwhile, the seminaries of traditional Catholic communities, which present the priesthood as total sacrifice and teach celibacy without apology, continue to draw young men in droves. It’s not a matter of numbers, but a matter of the heart. Vocations flourish where the priesthood is proposed as something worth giving one's whole life for.

Again, the problem is not the discipline, but rather it is the heart of modern man, formed by a culture that treats continence as impossible and sacrifice as irrational. Lowering the standard will not heal that heart. It will only confirm the lie that the self-gift Christ asks for is too much.

Fr. Longenecker pokes fun at the Church for wanting to preserve priestly celibacy "at all costs." But in a sense, that is exactly right. Some things are worth preserving at great cost, because what is at stake is not a policy but an image of Christ Himself, offered daily at the altar by men who have given Him everything.